Page 3 of The Bond

But the only way to get the truth to her was to get the doctors to remove the breathing tube. That was my one and only goal. This was now a fight to survive so I could tell the one person I trusted the whole truth. I just had to live long enough to tell Valentina everything I had been keeping secret.

Chapter 2

Valentina

More than two weeks after the fire in the woodshed, Enzo was moved from the medical center upstate to a hospital in New York City. Days after the move, I was permitted to see him during visiting hours. I’d managed to get permission by letting hospital staff believe we were married. As long as I kept up that charade, I could make sure that Enzo got the best care. I was the one person advocating for him the whole time, despite my heart being torn. Despite the anger that threatened to consume me like an out-of-control fire.

As I stepped into his private hospital room, I was shocked to find him out of bed. Not only was he out of bed, he was in the final stages of getting dressed—shrugging into a denim jacket that matched the jeans he wore.

I gasped when I saw him. No longer strapped to a bed for his own safety. No breathing tube. All that remained was the IV drip he seemed to have detached from his arm.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, marching up to him.

He was angled against the hospital bed, putting his jacket on. I’d brought some clothes several days earlier, but I hadn’t thought that he’d be getting into them this quickly.

“Doctors say I’m good to go. Tube’s been out for a couple of days now,” he answered in a hoarse rasp. The smoke from the woodshed fire was still affecting his voice.

“I’m certain they’ve said no such thing,” I countered.

“The doctors said that I’m healing. They’ve just been keeping me for observation these past couple of days to see how I am without that fucking tube. If I’m healing, what’s left to observe?”

Even with the jacket on now, Enzo looked leaner than he did before the fire. The weight loss just served to highlight his cheekbones, sharp enough to cut glass. His jaw was chiseled as ever, his arrogant mouth more prominent with the weight loss. He was still handsome in spite of everything his body had been through since the fire. I found that deeply infuriating. Of course he still looked good enough to tempt even me. Me, the fiancée who despised him for his betrayal.

“You can’t just leave,” I said, shaking my head in frustration. “You’re not ready.”

“As long as I’m conscious and able to speak, I make my own decisions, Mrs. De Luca,” he said pointedly. “Besides, according to the doctors, I have three days left I this hellhole.”

I felt my face flush with heat at him calling me Mrs. De Luca. Although we were still technically engaged, there was something extra intimate about him referring to me as his wife. It signaled an emotional and physical bond that only spelled danger for my heart if I continued down this road. “I let them think we were married so that I could visit you and make sure you were in good hands.”

“I figured,” he said, arms crossed as he leaned against the hospital bed. He clearly hadn’t regained all of his strength and he was trying to hide it.

“Can you even walk?” I demanded, trying to get through to him before he made some ridiculous decisions out of misguided male pride.

“Anybody who’s been in a hospital bed for two weeks is going to have a tough time walking,” he said. “Including anyone who’s completely healed. I’ve been out for almost a month. That cannot continue.”

“This is a bad idea,” I said flatly.

“I’ve been stuck in the hospital, in the dark about everything, while who fucking knows what’s been happening—”

“I have things under control,” I interrupted. “Nobody knows that you’re in the hospital. Everyone thinks that things are going on like normal.”

While I had made sure that his move to the new hospital was successful, I had also kept up appearances for my parents and Enzo’s family. I let my parents think that we were still perfectly secure, hiding out in the safehouse upstate, biding our time until the wedding. Doing that had been a gamble because Enzo, in what I could only describe as being in an agitated state, had accused my father of sending someone to start the fire in the woodshed. If my father was responsible, he’d see right through my lies. But I couldn’t deal with Enzo’s condition and my father, so I had taken a chance and settled on pretending that everything was fine. I’d deal with the fallout once Enzo fully healed.

Then, there had been Enzo’s father, who I had lied to by sending text messages from Enzo’s phone. I’d kept the texts short and to the point, letting Don De Luca think that Enzo was still at the safehouse tracking whoever it was that had been coming after us.

And whoever had been coming after us had showed no mercy so far. A hitman had targeted my father weeks earlier, shooting him in Enzo’s apartment. Then there had been the fires set at Enzo’s car dealership, the bombing at a nearby bank, and an attempted poisoning during a wedding cake tasting.

All of it seemed to point to a common enemy—somebody who was out to destroy both my family and Enzo’s. The Romanos and the De Lucas has been at war for years, and only my arranged marriage to Enzo could put an end to this bloody feud. But ever since the agreement to our arranged marriage, someone had been coming after both the Romanos and the De Lucas alike. Except, Enzo believed that my father had orchestrated the fire at the safehouse. If we had a single, common enemy, how could my father be the one to blame for the fire?

“Look, I appreciate you doing all of this for me, but you don’t have to anymore,” Enzo said. “I’ll take it from here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

“I’m grateful,” he said. “But you don’t need to keep pretending to give a shit about me. I don’t deserve it.”

So, he didn’t like owing me. Not now that I knew his true motives for pursuing a marriage to me. Knowing what he was really up to put me at an advantage and it was clear that Enzo didn’t like that one bit. He wasn’t just trying to get away from the hospital. He was obviously trying to get away from me specifically.

“This isn’t about what you deserve,” I retorted. “You’re useless to me dead. That’s why I’ve fought so hard to keep you alive.”